Who’s Cold (last 7 days)

Upcoming Schedule

Mon (8:15), Tues (8:15), Wed (8:00), Thurs (7:15) vs Pittsburgh

Fri (8:10), Sat (4:10), Sun (2:10) at Milwaukee

3. Cincinnati Reds (last week: 2):

45-42, 4th Place, 6.0 GB, 333 RS, 318 RA (+15)

The Reds entered this week winners in 8 of 9, coming off an impressive 4-game sweep at San Francisco. They however got swept in San Diego to the lowly Padres, but recovered by taking 2 of 3 over the weekend against Milwaukee.

Simon has the “stuff” to strike out a lot more batters. That he doesn’t continues to puzzle me, and continues to hold him back with the advanced stats. Steve, can you think of any other pitchers with a similar profile, where they “should” strike out more batters but don’t, yet because they have such good “stuff” they get good results? If so, were they able to outperform their advanced stats over a meaningful period of time?

I was headed to the bottom of the article to ask the exact same question. So my takeaway from this is that I better understand what fWAR measures, and am more convinced that it doesn’t do a good job of measuring run prevention, a pitcher’s single most important job. If Simon pitches to contact, induces more grounders than fly balls in a hitter friendly park and holds the opponent to 2 runs in 7 1/3 innings, and fWAR suggests that a replacement level pitcher would have been a better choice to start that game then I don’t want a better pitcher, I want a better stat. Odd case and minimal sample size to evaluate the merits of fWAR I know, but it does make me skeptical.

I really don’t like fWAR for pitchers. I’m not very big on WAR in general, but that’s partly due to too many people looking no further than WAR when comparing players. No “one stat to rule them all” is going to give you the whole picture. WAR does about as well as any stat can and it still falls way, way short.

I will note that it’s times like when that -0.1 WAR shows up that gives the non-metric aligned crowd an awful lot of ammo when debating the merits of advanced metrics. So they see that -0.1 WAR, look at Simon’s performance, and say “See, I told you advanced metrics don’t mean anything!!!” When in fact there are many really good metrics out there (wRC+, I’m talking to you!). That’s also why I like WAR a little better for position players but as there are some issues with defensive metrics, especially over a small sample, and while these metrics are an important component of WAR calculations for position players, there are problems there as well.

The WAR calculated by Baseball-Reference shouldn’t create the same issues for people who look at runs surrendered as the virtually exclusive way to measure pitchers. It uses ERA as the baseline, not FIP. So runs surrendered matters most of all. Simon’s overall WAR at B-R is 1.9 (0.5 at FanGraphs) and it was positive for the Milwaukee start.

The “see, WAR is stupid” crowd really just don’t like fWAR in this case. To me, WAR does a better job with pitchers because the position player WAR has such a big defensive component in it, and those numbers are pretty unreliable over short periods of time (like half a season).

I’m definitely not in the “WAR is stupid” camp, nor do I disdain all advanced metrics. But I do struggle with the mingling of predictive and summary stats. I understand that the “f” in fWAR stands for future and it is therefore intended to be predictive of future performance. But it’s not at all clear to me that fWAR is a good predictor (or at least, I feel that it can often be a misleading predictor for certain pitchers). Rather, I perceive it simply as a summary stat to identify pitchers who are good at striking out many batters without walking many. I totally understand that those two are desirable traits, but it misses (or undervalues) pitchers who pitch to contact and avoid yielding line drives. If you’re good at inducing popups and fly balls, or at inducing grounders, you don’t have to strike out anyone to be a good pitcher. Which may just be a long way round saying what LWBlogger2 has already pointed out. WAR’s and fWAR’s are intended to be all encompassing stats and I’m not convinced they tell us much we don’t already know.

Yes bWAR is a little better in my book for pitchers but I still am not a giant fan. I would love to see a WAR calculation that perhaps used SIERA. Even then, I’m not so sure about it’s use as the be all, end all stat that some of my peers use it as.

Thank you Theo Epstein. Trading Hammel and Smardzijan just before the Reds open a 5 game series is fortunate for the Reds hitters.
I heard on the post game show that David Holmberg will be pitching in the double header and not Chen Ming Wang. It’ll be interesting to see the lefty pitch. I was hopeful it would be Holmberg instead of Wang.
I see that Oakland DFA’d Jeff Francis after their big trade with the Cubs. I wonder if Walt re-signing him is going to be Jocketty’s big July move?

Read today a very interesting point made by the St. L Dispatch. They talk about the organizational philosophy to stockpile pitching. People on this blog talk about the lack of talent in the minors, but where do the Reds have prospects at every level? Pitching. The Cards have been doing it this way for over ten years and that means the philosophy was started by-wait for it-Walt Jocketty. The Cubs have been stockpiling position players, which is fine, but they have less pitching now than they had a week ago. Reds need to get fat this week.

There are pretty convincing analysts out there who are saying that teams should stockpile hitters instead of pitchers. With the dramatic reduction in offense in MLB over the last ten years (it’s really enormous) good hitters are more scarce than good pitchers. So the formula that worked 15-20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, isn’t the formula that works now. I’m not saying that this is right, only that it’s a pretty persuasive case. The Cubs are stockpiling good young hitters and when they are ready for the major leagues, the team will go out and sign pitchers in the free agent market. Again, not defending, just offering an explanation.

Some All Star talk. A lot of angry noise from the pros on mlbnetwork about Metheny’s selections of Carpenter and Pat Neshek. And this is from people who generally adore the Cardinals. At 3rd base, better choices would have been Anthony Rendon and Casey McGehee. Many relievers more qualified than Nesek, Houston Street was mentioned the most often. Even a Cardinal fan called in to criticize the choice of Carpenter.